2013 MLB Hall of Fame Screechfest

Now that we've got that out of our systems, what's the threshold for suspicion/evidence sufficient to exclude?

 

OK, I don't agree with but understand withholding votes from guys who either failed a test after testing was installed, an indication of extremely poor risk assessment ability if nothing else. After that, it's all bullshit as far as I'm concerned. I'm not going to penalize players who excelled under a system that was implicitly condoned by all of baseball at the time -- including many of the voters who're now up in arms about it. In fact, I believe there's a direct correlation between the amount of drivel a writer put out about McGwire and Sosa in 1998 and their puritanism about PEDs in 2012.

 

I think the defense that baseball condoned PED use is specious. From day 1, we preach to our children not to go along with the crowd when the crowd leads you astray. In our country, we lionize whistle blowers. We write laws protecting them.

And, yet, I am to believe that Major League Baseball is such a cloistered world that ethics known the world over, at least as understood at the time, did not penetrate the bubble?

That's a reach. I hesitate to throw them baseball's indifference as a life jacket.

 

We have to write laws protecting whistleblowers in this country because the culture hates them.

When did MLB begin drug testing in earnest? 2004?

 

The Basic Agreement including drug testing was signed in 2002. Don't know when the penalties became effective. First they had the allegedly confidential tests which were leaked (of course).
Dick Whitman, if there is a corporate culture which stresses going along with the crowd more than baseball's does, especially inside clubhouses, I don't know about it.

 

I'm not sure what the answer to that is. Other than, perhaps, academia - or even newspapers - there's a degree of go-with-the-crowd urging in every corporate setting. I imagine football's all-for-one, one-for-all mentality is worse (better?) than baseball's, just because of the nature of the sport.

I'm not arguing that it absolutely, positively should not be considered as a factor when evaluating the players' behavior in the time period. But the amount of weight I would assign it is, I imagine, pretty negligible compared to the amount of weight you would.

 

"Hey, use this stuff and you may play a lot better and/or heal from injuries faster. You'll help the team. You'll help your family. Everyone does it and no one cares. There's not even any testing. It's impossible to get caught."

I'm sorry, but I just can't muster the moral outrage against anyone who used steroids up until about 2005.

After 2005 is a different story, slightly.

For the record....
2002: CBA with steroid testing signed
2003: it goes into affect with survey testing
2004: first real resting with slap on the wrist penalties
2005: more harsh penalties that we have today (50-100-life)

 

For the record, I hate that I might be coming off as a moralist. It's not my style. But the alternative is never condemning anyone for anything. And that's not my style, either.

 

Better argument might be that prior to 2004, not only did baseball condone PEDs, it encouraged them.

 

Wondering if the people who won't vote for Barry Bonds also won't vote for Ryan Braun when he's eligible.

 

What is your opinion of U.S. armed forces members who committed atrocities in Vietnam?

 

No idea what this means.